IN
THE
WIND
P38
GASGAS ANNOUNCES
2017 TRIALS TEAM
G
asGas North America announced its 2017 National
Trials Team, which will be led by 10-time AMA
National Trials Champion Geoff Aaron. The four-rider
factory team effort will consist of Bryan Roper and Alex
Niederer in the pro class, Micah Hertrich in the expert
125 class and Madeleine Hoover riding the women's
pro division in the 2017 AMA/NATC Mototrial National
series. They will compete in major regional and local
events during 2017. CN
Bryan Roper will represent GasGas in the pro class in the
2017 AMA/NATC National Championship Trials Series.
APRILIA RSV4 FW-GP IS A
MOTOGP BIKE FOR THE PEOPLE
T
he Aprilia Factory Works program that was
unveiled last year has a new bike in its lineup.
But it's not just any bike, this one is called the
RSV4 FW-GP—a 250-horsepower monster that
Aprilia claims is the absolute closest you'll get to a
MotoGP bike right now.
The RSV4 FW-GP is a purely track-only ma-
chine and comes dripping with the kind of tech
you'd expect on a factory superbike. And, not far
off what has been running around in MotoGP in
the hands of Stefan Bradl and Alvaro Bautista.
The RSV4 FW-GP differs from a standard RSV4
in almost every way but none more so than the
engine, which now houses pneumatic valves in
the cylinder heads—just like the MotoGP bike—and
the bore has been increased to 81mm from 78mm
to guarantee that 250-horsepower figure. To give
you an idea of how big a deal the FW-GP is, not
even the Honda RC213V-S—Honda's much-lauded
MotoGP replica—has pneumatic valves.
It's hard to tell whether this is more MotoGP or
WorldSBK because Aprilia has done a pretty good
job of blurring the lines between the two over the
years. The RSV4 is indeed a superbike, but the
engine was used as the basis for the successful
MotoGP CRT machine. Fast-forward to 2015 and
even the Aprilia factory used a CRT engine in their
factory bike for Marco Melandri/Stefan Bradl and
Bautista before using this engine as the base for
the now prototype RS-GP machine that features—
among other things—pneumatic valves, just like
the production FW-GP you see here.
Anyway, who cares? The fact is you can buy
one of these 250-horsepower beasts, and that
itself is cause for celebration. CN
The Aprilia RSV4 FW-GP is basically a MotoGP
race bike that you can buy.
